Elizabeth St residents say Dominion Rd hotel project will 'destroy the neighbourhood'

Residents living on Elizabeth St, off Dominion Rd in the Auckland suburb of Mt Eden, are desperate to stop a five-storey hotel from being built on their street.

Auckland Council this week said a resource consent application had been lodged for a 60-room hotel to be constructed at 409 Dominion Rd, which is at the corner of Dominion Rd and Elizabeth St.

The resource consent for the $20 million hotel was lodged on March 23, 2017, under Jiayao Capital Investments Limited.

Peter Clark, 62, an aviation journalist who lives on the street, said residents were angry about the plans.

"The concept of what I've seen of this hotel looks like a shipping container storage site, and this is really worrying to me," Clark said.

"This is a beautiful area . . . it's a heritage area, but they're allowing this ugly monstrosity going up here and we virtually have no say."

Clark said the concerns were that the entrance to the hotel would be on Elizabeth St and this would cause major traffic and parking problems.

"We have major problems here with parking . . . and now we're going to have this."

Clark said residents had been caught by surprise, and had no idea that an application had been put in for a hotel development.

"We only found this out by a story in the New Zealand Herald and a lot of people are very, very concerned, and very, very worried about what's taking place," he said.

"None of us know what to do or how to deal with this."

Clark said the properties on the central Mt Eden street were worth more than $1.5m.

"Who knows what having this hotel here will do to property values," he added.

Resident Nikki Lovrich also expressed dismay and anger with the hotel plans.

"The sheer scale of the building does not fit in at all with the rest of the houses on the street," she said.

"A five-storey hotel on the corner of our residential street will destroy the neighbourhood."

Another resident, who did not want to be named, said she was concerned at the suggestion that the hotel would target Chinese tourists.

"The last thing I want is to have people talking loudly and spit on footpaths at our street entrance," she said.

Matthew Morton, 48, a project manager, said more than 20 residents turned up for a meeting at his house on Thursday night.

"People are angry, and the meeting was to discuss ideas on what we could do to stop the development," he said.

Morton said some members of the group had already approached their local MP and councillors.

When asked for a response, Eric Paoyu Chou, the general manager of the project, said the developers would be abiding by New Zealand's "strict laws and regulations".

"From design, construction, layout and almost every step of the way, we will work with top New Zealand designers, builders and consultants," Chou said.

"Our intention is to bring prosperity to the district and to Auckland city, and this is also a positive echo to the country's tourism plan."

Chou said the hotel, to be named Hotel One, would bring global independent travellers to the Dominion Rd area.

"We will try our best to make this a win-win for everybody," he added.

Mark White, Auckland Council's manager central resource consenting, said the application was currently being processed.

"As we have only recently received the application, a decision on whether it will be publicly notified for submissions is yet to be made," White said.

"A decision to notify will be made once the application has been assessed."